


A Party without Cake is Just a Meeting

by polynya



Category: Bleach
Genre: Background Ichihime, Baking, Bonding, Friendship, Multi, Parenthood, Plans For The Future, background chadishi, background renruki, i wrote this for my friend but you can read it too, post-canon pre-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:46:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26462131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polynya/pseuds/polynya
Summary: Renji and Orihime bake a cake and talk about life.
Relationships: Abarai Renji & Inoue Orihime
Comments: 20
Kudos: 53





	A Party without Cake is Just a Meeting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luna12](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luna12/gifts).



> I wrote this as a birthday present for Luna12, who is not only my best fandom friend, but one of my best friends, period. We spend a lot of time talking about baking and our families, so here is a fanfic about Renji and Orihime bonding over baking and their families. All the stuff about Renji & Chad's Bad Cake Experience is a reference to [Bleach 134](https://bleach.fandom.com/wiki/The_Beautiful_Patissier,_Yumichika!), which is one of my favorite episodes, and Luna12 puts up with me making jokes about it constantly. 
> 
> Uh, it's not exactly canon-compliant, I guess. I do what I want. ( _let chad be a social worker!!!_ )
> 
> The title is a Julia Child quote. Rated T for cussing. I am quite sure Julia Child approved of cursing in the kitchen.

“What, ah, is it?” Renji asked, peering at the large box sitting on the Kurosaki’s kitchen counter.

“It’s an ice cream attachment for my mixer,” Orihime explained. “Uryuu got it for me for my birthday. The main part of it is in the freezer, already. You need to let it get cold ahead of time.”

“Oh! Neat,” Renji declared. Ice cream wasn’t something they had in Soul Society, but he’d had it a few times in the Living World and he approved of it, generally. Rukia and Orihime were very keen on it and enjoyed making large productions out of going to little cafe-type places where it was sold, the cutsier the better. Renji’s job was usually to get the flavor that Rukia wanted second-most, when she had trouble deciding. There were worse jobs, he supposed.

Orihime set her jaw. “I want to make an ice cream cake!” she declared, with the resolve of a warrior declaring that she will handle the defense.

“A what?” Renji echoed.

“It’s a cake that is partially ice cream!” Orihime explained. “Sometimes, when you buy them from ice cream shops, they are all ice cream, but the one I saw on tv had two layers of cake and a layer of ice cream in the center.” She pulled out a handful of papers, each in its own protective plastic sleeve, and started spreading them out on the counter.

Peering over, Renji realized that several of them were hand-written recipes… not even recipes, but more like _notes_ for recipes. There was also a construction diagram, and some decoration templates. Renji was half-horrified and half-intrigued. He did the vast majority of his cooking by rote muscle memory with a dash of on-the-spot improvisation. He did own exactly one cookbook, which he consulted whenever he wanted to make something he had never made before. When faced with such dire circumstances, he would follow the instructions to the letter. Orihime’s method reminded him an awful lot of the way he designed work-out schedules for his subordinates (or anyone else who wanted one, Renji was very generous with making work-out schedules). It was based on deep knowledge of basic principles, customized for a particular situation. He had never considered approaching his cooking that way before.

“Bottom layer, lavender lemon!” Orihime announced, as if she were calling out her Rikka. “Then a layer of sakura ice cream, topped with a smear of strawberry curd! Top layer, pistachio-matcha! Cardamom whipped cream as frosting, topped with raspberries, candied violets, and caramel butterflies!”

“That sounds great!” Renji announced. He didn’t actually like cake, but he did like _flavors_ , and that was an _awful lot_ of flavors. Renji had learned from trial and error that, for him, trying to put more than three flavors he liked into something usually ended in disaster. He was secretly very envious of Orihime’s genius when it came to this sort of thing. There was one aspect that was niggling at him, though. “Why am I here?”

Orihime’s brows furrowed. “I was hoping you would help.”

“Help?” Renji echoed. “Orihime, I don’t know how to make any of that stuff. I make Christmas cake once a year, because Rukia demands it. I am not a cake guy.”

Orihime rearranged her papers nervously. “Soooo... I have never made ice cream before. You have to make sort of a custard. I haven’t actually made a lot of custards-- that’s never been my job at the bakery.”

Sakura ice cream. The tips of Renji’s ears suddenly burned. “Wait, Rukia didn’t tell you about her birthday, did she?”

Orihime made a disbelieving face at him. “Why _wouldn’t_ she tell me? She sent me at least a dozen pictures of those little rabbit-shaped cream puffs you made! They were so _cute_ , Renji, weren’t you proud of them? She said they were _delicious_ , too, especially the cream.”

Renji rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I cut a deal with Byakuya’s pastry chef so that he would teach me how to make that stuff. You have no idea how many batches I curdled before I got the hang of it.”

“But you’re an expert now! You can show me!”

“Ah, well, practice helps a lot. Having all the steps memorized, y’know, because once everything starts to thicken up, you gotta work fast.”

Orihime was nodding along enthusiastically, and Renji realized he had been _roped in_.

“You can walk me through the custard and I’ll teach you how to make the butterflies _and_ I’ll show you how to whip cream in my mixer, it’s so fun!”

Renji considered this. Ichika’s birthday was only a few months away. Renji wasn’t very creative with decorations, and caramel butterflies seemed like a good thing to add to his limited stable of embellishment. “This is gonna take hours. I feel a little bad to saddle Rukia with watching Ichika all day.”

“Oh, they’re already gone,” Orihime waved a hand casually. “Ichigo planned out a whole day for the kids, out of the house.”

Renji frowned slightly, contemplating his wife and her chaotic interdimensional best friend let loose in Karakura with their respective offspring.

Orihime appeared to be reading his mind. “Yuzu is going with them, and I would bet anything that they will just ‘run into’ Chad and Uryuu at some point.”

“Oh,” Renji replied. “You mean we have a whole afternoon to just bake stuff without any small people bothering us?”

Orihime grinned and nodded, her eyes wide and eager and more than a little manic.

“Well, hot damn,” Renji declared.

* * *

“Pour some of the milk in the egg bowl,” Renji instructed, holding a bowl of egg yolks close to where Orihime was stirring a saucepan of milk. “Try to pour it in a nice thin stream so it cools a little. The whole point is to avoid cooking the eggs.”

Orihime carefully followed his instructions.

“Okay, back on the heat and keep stirring! You can’t stop stirring, that’s the trick!”

“How do you do this if it’s just you?”

“You gotta be fast. Practice, mostly,” Renji replied, whisking the eggs and milk together. “I’m gonna pour mine back in. Some people like to do this through a strainer, but I find it more trouble than it’s worth. Here we go! Keep stirring!”

“What happens next?”

“It gets thick,” Renji shrugged.

“How thick? How will I know?”

“You’ll know.”

Orihime stirred furiously. They stared at the saucepan in silence. Not total silence. From Orihime’s phone, Sia wailed about how she was a Porsche with no brakes.

“This is a good song,” Renji observed.

“This _is_ a good song,” Orihime agreed. “Oh! Oh! It’s happening! It’s getting thick!”

“Keep stirring.”

“It’s custard! We made custard! Can I stop stirring long enough to high five?”

“Just use your other hand!”

“Right! I forgot!”

They high-fived.

* * *

Renji peered at the mixer suspiciously. “There’s a motor in there?” he asked, eyes narrowed. “Doesn’t it fill the kitchen with exhaust?”

“It's an electric motor,” Orihime replied, snapping the ice cream attachment into place. “It’s really useful for making bread dough. Also whipping cream or eggs.”

“It can _whip_ _stuff_?” Renji gawped. “Does it do a good job? Stiff peaks an’ all?”

“Oh, yeah,” Orihime nodded. “It does a better job than trying to whip them by hand.” She eyed Renji’s formidable biceps. “A better job than most people would do, anyway.”

She poured the custard into the bowl, and then turned on the mixer. Renji abruptly ducked behind the kitchen island.

“You’re very silly,” Orihime scolded him, as his eyes slowly reappeared between a bag of flour and a canister of sugar. “How do you have portals to other dimensions and fake souls, but you don’t have mixers?”

“I could probably get Akon to make me one,” Renji mused. “But it would probably be covered in tiny hands or something.”

“Maybe you could ask him not to?” Orihime replied, making a face.

“The tiny hands are compulsory,” Renji replied darkly.

* * *

“Where do you think they went wrong?” Orihime frowned, stirring together lemon cake batter while Renji shelled pistachios.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Renji replied, waving a hand. “I make one cake a year, for Rukia, because I love her, and every time I make it, I wonder-- how can you fuck up a cake so bad? Cakes aren’t even hard. The ol’ baking power/baking soda swap is the obvious possibility, but I’ve done that, and I know what it tastes like. Did Yumichika drip eyelash glue in the batter? Was it weird fumes from Urahara’s shop? They made so many cakes and every one of them was uniquely terrible. One of them was salty. Disturbingly salty. Tasted like fucking salt pickles. That’s the only one I’ve ever been able to identify what was wrong.”

“Was Jinta around?” Orihime guessed. “Or Yoruichi?”

Renji waved a finger at her. “You know, I had never assumed malice, but you may be on to something.”

“Have you ever asked Chad if he has any ideas?”

“Chad and I agreed to never discuss the Cake Incident.” Renji shelled a few more pistachios. “Does Chad eat cake? Or does he still feel the scars of the Cake Incident?”

“Chad eats cake. At least I think he does. Uryuu makes a lot of cakes. Sometimes Chad takes them in and shares them with the kids he works with.” Orihime sprinkled in some dried lavender. “You know, Chad is kind of an expert at helping people process traumatic experiences. Maybe you _should_ talk to him about it.”

Renji scratched one of his sideburns. “It seems a little bit strong to call it _trauma_. It was just a bunch of bad cakes, baked by idiots. Maybe I should just get over it.”

“Maybe you should just get over it,” Orihime agreed.

* * *

The cakes were in the oven. Orihime set a cup of tea in front of Renji. “This is my special Orihime Double Tea, Standard Blend,” she whispered conspiratorially. “It is… not for everyone, but I think you will appreciate it. It’s my favorite.”

Renji peered into his cup. “What makes it Double Tea?”

“It is regular sencha, but instead of water, I use bottled iced tea to brew it.”

“Wow!” Renji exclaimed as he inhaled the steam. “You’re a genius!”

Orihime blinked. “You think so?”

“Well, it’s too hot to taste,” Renji admitted. “But the principle seems solid.”

“There are lots of variants,” Orihime explained. “I like to brew oolong with barley tea, myself, but this is the only one Ichigo will drink, so I figured I would start you on that.”

“Ichigo is a coward,” Renji proclaimed boldly.

Orihime rested her chin on her hand and looked thoughtful for a moment. “Hey, Renji?” she asked tentatively.

“Hmm?” he asked, still examining the tea. They didn’t have bottled tea in Soul Society, but the same principle would probably work with homemade iced tea.

“Do they have universities in Soul Society? You and Rukia went to some sort of shinigami school, right?”

Renji looked up. “Oh, you mean like the one Ichigo goes to?”

Orihime nodded.

“Sort of. I mean, yeah, we have them, but they are a little different. Here, for the most part, you go and learn how to do a job, right? Chad went and learned to be a social worker, and Uryuu went to one to learn to be a doctor?”

“Right,” Orihime agreed.

“I guess Shin’ou-- that’s the shinigami school-- is kinda like that. There are a few schools for medicine, too, mostly for non-shinigami doctors, although I hear it’s pretty common for people at the Fourth to go through a special program. Our universities are more… well, they’re for rich people. Nobles. I guess those are more like the kind Ichigo goes to. He reads books and talks about the books with other people who read the same books, right?”

“He’s going to be a teacher,” Orihime pointed out. “But otherwise, that’s about right. Sometimes he writes papers about books. One of them was published in a journal.”

“Yeah, that sounds more like Soul Society universities. They’re for nobles who want to get together and talk about nerd stuff and don’t have anything better to do with their time. I guess it’s a good way for lesser nobles to rub noses with better nobles. Why do you ask?”

“Have you ever thought about going? Or has Rukia?”

Renji snorted. “Me? Not a chance.” He laughed, and it came out a little nervous. “Can you imagine? A big meathead like me? And Rukia would never. Rukia’s more of a learn-by-doing type.”

Orihime toyed with her tea mug. “Rukia said you did really well in school. She says you always lie and say you didn’t.”

Renji sucked his teeth. _Wives_. “Maybe,” he finally agreed. “Again, why do you ask?”

Orihime took a sip of her tea. “Ichigo thinks he might finish his Ph.D. this year. We’ve been talking about… about if I might go back to school.”

“Oh,” Renji replied, blowing some air out of his cheeks. “Oh.” He took a test sip of his own tea. It was true. Orihime _was_ a genius. It would probably be a shame for her to _not_ go back to school. “Do you not want to?” he finally asked.

“I do!” Orihime exclaimed. “But I… I don’t know what I would study! I like so many things! Ichigo’s classes sound so interesting, and I think he’s really going to like being a teacher and sometimes I think I would like to be a teacher, too! Or sometimes, when I’m at my part-time job, I think, ‘Orihime, you are really a very good baker!’ I could go to culinary school, instead of university, and be an important pastry chef in a fancy restaurant! That could be fun! But I also like helping in the clinic! Karin thought she wanted to be an EMT, but then she decided she liked sports medicine better, and Yuzu thinks she might want to be a psychologist. Isshin says he doesn’t mind selling the clinic when he retires, but if I became a doctor, we could keep it in the family!” She cocked her head to one side. “I also really liked science in school! What if I did something different than all my friends? I could study geology or computer science or astrophysics!”

Renji was getting a little overwhelmed. “What’s astrophysics?”

“Oh, it’s when you study outer space! How stars form and what life might be like on other planets.”

Renji goggled. “You can _study that_? Why doesn’t everyone go to school to study that?”

“Well, I hear it’s hard,” Orihime excused. “A lot of math. Some people don’t like math.”

Renji wondered if it was anything like Cross-Dimensional Physics, a topic that most people had found very difficult at Shin’ou. People didn’t like it _at all_ when guys from the Rukon were good at Cross-Dimensional Physics. It’s not like Renji was headed to the Twelfth or anything, so he’d always kept his mouth shut, done just well enough to pass the exams, and saved his showing off for Zanjutsu Class. He bet Orihime would’ve been pretty good at Cross-Dimensional Physics. He hated the idea that anyone had ever made Orihime think that she would have to pretend to be shitty at Cross-Dimensional Physics, or space physics, or anything, actually.

“I bet you would be great at any of those things!” he announced, bumping his cup and splashing his tea a little.

Orihime made a sad face. “But you know what? I also really like being home a lot with Kazui. We have a really good set-up right now… I get to work a little and help my friends a little and make dinner every night and be with my baby. It’s… nice. And I think Ichigo really worries that he took advantage of me, with him going to school for so long, but I really don’t mind!”

“Yeah, I get that,” Renji agreed, mopping up his spilled tea with a dish towel. “Rukia didn’t really like staying home with Ichika when she was a baby. She had a little trouble getting used to the idea that I really don’t mind. But then again, it’s only the afternoons for me. And Byakuya doesn't get it at all, he thinks I’m a loon.”

Orihime laughed. “I bet!”

Renji took another sip of his tea and thought about things. “In Soul Society,” he said, “we live a really long time, but also, nothing ever changes. It’s funny, because there’s _time_ to try out different careers and spend time with your kids and wait until you’re ready to do something, but no one ever _does_. And you humans are always trying to cram so much into your tiny little lives. I don’t know which is better. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to take time to think about it, though. Especially if you like your life the way it is right now.” He rubbed his nose. “That didn’t help at all, did it? I think you should do the space one. That sounded best to me.”

Orihime laughed, a beautiful, joyful sound. “No, you helped a lot, actually. It’s a big decision and I think I just needed someone to tell me it was okay to not know!”

Renji snorted. “My skull is almost entirely empty at all times, and I’ve managed to stumble into a pretty good life. You’ve got a ton of brains and a family who loves you and a bunch of good friends and a really great kid. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Take your time.”

Orihime beamed. “Thank you, Renji.”

“But if you do go for the space one, you should name a star after Rukia. Is that a thing you can do?”

“If it is, I will name a star after Rukia, for sure!”

* * *

“There is something wrong with my butterflies,” Renji declared.

“They need to be loopier,” Orihime replied, swirling her hand around. Caramel flew through the air and landed, miraculously, on the wax paper in the shape of a butterfly. “Yours are very spiky.”

Renji attempted to peel his best effort so far off his wax paper. It snapped into three. He sighed.

“We do a lot of butterflies at the bakery,” Orihime replied, somewhat apologetically. “I have a lot of practice.” She picked up his broken shards and arranged them a little. “At the bakery, everything has to be perfect. If you screw up, you have to throw it away and start over.”

“You can’t eat it?” Renji frowned. He wouldn’t bother baking at all if he wasn’t allowed to eat his own mistakes.

“Of course you can eat it,” Orihime pishposhed. “But if I ate all my mistakes, I’d get a tummy ache.” She blew a breath of air out of her nose. “Instead of being perfect, what if we were just creative, instead? What do these look like?”

“A Higa Zekko,” Renji replied, glumly. It did rather look like the spiky carnage of his busted zanpakuto.

Orihime’s eyes lit up. “Renji, you’re a genius!” She grabbed the bowl of caramel and a fresh sheet of wax paper. Renji watched her as she carefully swirled out an oval and added some spikes. “What do you think?”

Renji’s eyes went wide. “That is the best caramel snake skull I have ever seen.”

“We can arrange it with your pieces to make a Zabimaru, and put the butterflies around it! It will be Inoue and Abarai Leap Into Battle: The Cake!”

Renji scratched his chin. “Is that okay? You had a nice cake all planned out, with candied violets and stuff.”

“It was a boring cake!” Orihime rebutted, wagging her finger at him. “This is much better! Also, I see no reason why we can’t also have violets. Hmm. What do we have in the kitchen that we could make a Hollow out of?”

* * *

Renji and Orihime were sipping drinks on the back porch when everyone piled in a few hours later. There were five adults involved, and yet, somehow, Chad was carrying both children, who were asleep.

“Welcome home, brave warriors!” Orihime announced, hoisting her glass, which was filled with a bright turquoise liquid that graduated to pink at the bottom. Renji saluted with his, a moment after.

“Cripes,” Ichigo muttered, “Did you make him a _Koten Zanshun_?”

“It’s good,” Renji announced, taking a sip.

“What’s in it?” Rukia asked, curiously.

“It’s a secret,” Orihime replied.

“Orihime has three signature cocktails,” Ichigo announced grimly, while Orihime preened. Renji wasn’t sure he had taught Ichigo very much over the years of their acquaintance, but at one point he had advised the kid to “get good at bragging about your wife”, and Kurosaki had really taken that one to heart. If that was the _only_ thing Ichigo had ever picked up from him, Renji was happy to own it. “The _Santen Kesshun_ is for fortification. Liquid courage. The _Souten Kisshun_ revives you after a long trial. It can practically revive the dead, or a guy who has just gone through oral exams. The _Koten Zanshun_ just knocks you on your ass. My dad is usually the only one who can drink that one.”

“It tastes like being run through by a unicorn,” Renji declared.

“I want one,” Rukia pouted.

“No can do,” Orihime shook her head. “Once I’ve started drinking one, I forget how to make more. How to do anything, really. I am officially _off-duty_.”

“I can make negronis,” Uryuu offered.

“Ooh, yes, those will go good with the cake!” Orihime agreed. “Which is probably frozen by now. We can have it as soon as the kids wake up. Yuzu, can you take it out of the freezer so it can thaw a little?”

“Sure!” Yuzu agreed, and she and Uryuu headed inside.

“Gimme my baby,” Renji demanded, waving Chad over. “Sorry I can’t come get her, this drink made my legs go numb ten minutes ago.” Chad managed to transfer Ichika into her father’s lap, where she mumbled “hi daddy i saw a ‘lectric eel” before smashing her face into his chest and falling back asleep.

“We went to the aquarium,” Chad explained, settling down next to Renji. He shifted Kazui more comfortably onto his shoulder, and rubbed the toddler’s back gently.

“How did the cake go?” Ichigo asked, taking up the spot on Orihime’s other side and pressing a kiss into her temple.

“It’s going to blow your socks off,” Orihime replied ominously. “All-time top 10, easy.”

“Didja have fun?” Ichigo asked.

“I did! It was the best birthday present, thank you! You, too, Rukia!”

Renji looked at Orihime curiously. “I thought the ice cream thing was your birthday present.”

“That was my Chad and Uryuu birthday present,” Orihime replied. “My Ichigo birthday present was a whole day to myself to bake and my Rukia birthday present was a sous chef.”

Rukia was busy squishing herself into the space between Orihime and Renji.

“You didn’t tell me I was a birthday present!” Renji jabbed her in the ribs with his elbow. “I woulda done a better job!”

Rukia looked unperturbed. “You weren’t supposed to do a better job. You were supposed to have fun. Did you have fun?”

Renji reflected back over his afternoon. “I did. I had a lot of fun.”

“Good. It was secretly your birthday present, too.”

“It was not, you got me those sunglasses!”

“I got you those sunglasses because I don’t like walking around with a man wearing last season’s sunglasses. I arranged a secret baking date with my best friend for you because you’re too good a dad and you never take enough time for yourself.”

“Also because you wanted to eat cake,” Ichigo pointed out. “The inaugural text of this year’s Oh-Shit-Are-They-Having-A-Birthday-AGAIN? text chain read, and I quote, ‘I have a plan to get us cake.’”

“You didn’t have to tell everyone that,” Rukia replied. “You should keep some things to yourself. It adds mystery to a marriage.”

“Your whole marriage is a mystery,” Ichigo shot back. “A mystery as to why anyone would marry you.”

“I am very rich,” Rukia replied. “Let me try your drink, babe.”

“Can Ichika open senkaimon yet?” Renji asked,dangling it out of her reach.

“Absolutely not.”

“Then, no. Someone has to get us home.”

In his lap, Ichika stirred. “daddy, is it cake time yet?” she mumbled, still mostly asleep.

“I think so,” he replied. “I tried to make you a caramel butterfly but it came out stupid, so I made you a Hollow out of marshmallows and Pocky instead. It’s not as good as the one Aunt Orihime make out of amanattou and agar.” To be honest, Orihime’s amanattou-and-agar Hollow was probably going to haunt his dreams.

“I will eat them both,” Ichika replied.

Renji poked her in the side. “Not if I get there first.”


End file.
